Fwd: Google Doc for describing best practices.

[Bryan Bishop]

From: Nathan Seidle <nat...@sparkfun.com>
Date: Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 12:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Discuss] Google Doc for describing best practices.
To: The Open Source Hardware Association Discussion List <dis...@lists.oshwa.org>

Hi David - thanks for hammering on this. Ayah - I hope you don't mind but I use littlebits as an example. I'd love to hear your feedback.

I can't quite get wording of an important section of 'Overall' and would like to discuss it. Littlebits is an example of mixed open/close. The PCB layouts are released (https://github.com/littlebitselectronics), the connectors are awesome and novel and unique, but are not released. This mix can be found in other projects, Makerbot being a large one. There are lots of parts we all use that won't have design docs (ex: microUSB connector), but when we the designer have access to the design docs and they are not released, then the design is not open source hardware in my eyes. I want to be clear that I don't think little bits is doing anything wrong; we've just never addressed this aspect. However, going forward I think we need to clear up the ambiguity. So here's my stab at the wording:

Any part of a design that can be opened but is intentionally withheld will cause a design to be considered partially open. The rule of thumb: Have I released all the source files that I have access to? If the answer is no, then the project is not OSHW.

I don't want to discourage people from releasing! So I'm willing to consider 'partially open' wording as a way to allow folks to get the benefits of open community while closing parts of a design if they feel the need.

Cheers,

-Nathan

--
Nathan Seidle
CEO, SparkFun Electronics Inc
Boulder, CO
Phone : 1-303-284-0979
Fax : 1-303-443-0048 

On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 6:35 PM, David A. Mellis <d...@mellis.org> wrote:

Hey all,

I copied Nate's best practices document (http://www.oshwa.org/sharing-best-practices/) into a Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CiL9nd0xPOGRkHcNnOTZdHG-niAHteOm74f9PmAHdLg/edit?usp=sharing

Please help improve it.

David

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[Bryan Bishop]

From: Catarina Mota <cata...@openmaterials.org>
Date: Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 11:04 AM

Subject: Re: [Discuss] Google Doc for describing best practices.
To: The Open Source Hardware Association Discussion List <dis...@lists.oshwa.org>

Hi all,

We're organizing a hackathon to arrive at some OSHW documentation best practices and tools: http://www.opensourcewarehouse.org

It all started a few months ago with a few causal conversations with open source hardware developers that were concerned with the fact that weren't getting enough public contributions to their projects and also that they sometimes found it difficult to build on top of other's projects. Both were related to insufficient, deficient or hard to interpret documentation. So this got us thinking about how can we improve documentation to make open source hardware more accessible to all and to drive more contributions to projects. This is the initial list of challenges we identified (to build upon by the community): http://www.opensourcewarehouse.org/problem-statement/

And here's an initial taxonomy (to be refined or abandoned at the hackathon): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkNG-lv1ELQvdHViNEdtVHp4dHRWOU8tcDNSbXROY3c&usp=sharing

Since this a huge challenge and one that concerns the entire community, we figured the best way to approach it would be to start with a hackathon to identify the problems and find ways to tackle them.

We hope that some of the outcomes will be:

- A set of best practices for open source hardware documentation, including a taxonomy and a check list.

- A set of recommended software tools for generating and sharing documentation - this may either be the adoption of something that is already out there or, more likely, a mashup of existing platforms

- A way to identify which parts of a project are open source and have documentation

- The seed for an OSHW repository or a search engine

I hope many of you can join us and bring your ideas and insights to the table. More details coming up on a separate email.

Cheers,

Catarina

On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 4:17 PM, Windell H. Oskay <win...@oskay.net> wrote:

On Mar 3, 2013, at 5:35 PM, David A. Mellis <d...@mellis.org> wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> I copied Nate's best practices document (http://www.oshwa.org/sharing-best-practices/) into a Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CiL9nd0xPOGRkHcNnOTZdHG-niAHteOm74f9PmAHdLg/edit?usp=sharing
>
> Please help improve it.

I have made some significant edits to the document in a few sections:
"Original Design Files," "Auxiliary Design Files," and some parts of "Additional Notes on Best Practice for OSHW" at the end.

I hope that these edits are considered helpful.


I still see a lot of room for improvement remaining, if anyone else would like to help out, in the following sections:

* The intro to "Sharing Files"
* Bill of materials
* Software and Firmware -- could really be expanded a lot
* Photos
* Instructions
* Legal practices to protect sharing
* Distributing Hardware
* Additional notes



Windell H. Oskay, Ph.D.
Co-Founder and Chief Scientist
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
175 San Lazaro Ave, STE 150
Sunnyvale CA 94086
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/

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